Issue 10

THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

THE RED LINE

I 10 FAITH

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Contents

Editor’s Introduction……………………………………………….……………………………3 The Drive………………………………..………………………………………………………….4 Article: Why Most People Don’t Like Short Stories………………………………………..9 Granted…………………………………………………………………………………………….11 Living With My Past……………………………………………………………………………..22 Bones and Hearts Accordion…………………………………………………………………..25 Egypt………………………………………………………………………………………………..29 The Judges………………………………………………………………………………………..41 The Judgement…………………………………………………………………………………..42

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THE RED LINE Welcome back, Cherished Readers, We’re in double figures for issues, this being our tenth. Not particularly to mark this pretty minor landmark, but through serendipity, this is also our debut for non-short story features, kicking off with Chris May’s article W hy Don’t People Like Short Stories? On one hand it’s an unsettling read for those of us who want to make our millions from short fiction, but then also reassuring to know that, if there’s a moral high ground, then we hold it.

Next is our collection of short stories. We have a story that asks the question: what would happen if prayers were answered? which then comes to some surprising conclusions. Then we have a child who has complete faith in the actions of his dubious step father, friction on a kibbutz, religion as a panacea for the past, and a short piece that thankfully restores the faith in child/parent relationships that had been previously picked apart.

We do have to thank our wonderful judge, Baptiste Borugougnon, who, though he shares his name with a meat dish, has stepped up like a real hero this month. He is a member of the humanist society, who we asked for volunteers a couple of months ago. Though some volunteered and then failed to deliver, Baptiste stayed the distance and we are forever indebted to him. As a member of the humanist society might wish, he restored our faltering faith in human nature. It does mean we only have feedback for the top three stories however, as this was what was asked from a number of people—not the fault of our judge.

That’s that. We have Joy, Sex, and the Album scheduled for the rest of the year, and we’ll be posting the themes for next year shortly.

Cheers, Josh, Stephen, and James

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The Drive

By Aliki Waller My feet are cold. I tell Darren but he doesn’t say anything. I tell him again and he doesn’t say anything again but I think he hears me because his hands tighten on the steering wheel so that his knuckles go white.

I decide not to tell him again. I’m scared that if I make him upset then I won’t be allowed to sit in the front anymore. Instead I sit up as tall as I can and look out through the massive windscreen. I never get to sit in the front and I can see a lot more than when I sit in the back. I look up at the streetlights as they pass by and at the cars going the other direction whizzing past us at a million miles an hour. I pretend it’s me who’s driving instead of Darren. I see a streetlight and I have to spin the steering wheel all the way to the right to try and avoid it until I’m leaning right over and almost touching Darren’s arm – although it’s only a pretend wheel that I’m spinning, not the real one, because Darren’s holding the real one and I’m not allowed to touch it when the car’s moving. Then a big lorry with two huge headlights comes towards us on

the other side of the road and I have to quickly steer to the left to stop us from crashing. I push the wheel all the way to the left and it won’t go left enough so I push with all of my body and I bump into the door with a bang and Darren looks at me and shouts, ‘Stop pissing about! Sit properly!’

I look at his face and I can tell he’s really angry so I sit properly in the seat, with my legs over the edge and my hands in my lap and my seatbelt around my waist, and I try to be quiet. I can tell he’s angry because his eyes are staring really hard at the road, like he’s trying to hypnotise it. Mummy says that when he gets like this then you can never tell what will set him off, so the best thing to do is to be really quiet – as quiet

as you can, as quiet as a mouse, even quieter than a mouse – and wait for him to calm down. Except sometimes something else will set him off and then they fight anyway. I hate it when they do that but it just makes it worse if I try to stop them so I try to be extra quiet until it’s over and Darren’s left the room, then I go over to Mummy and hug her until it’s all better again.

My feet are so cold they’re turning to ice. I really wish I had shoes and socks on. I think Mummy would be angry with Darren if she knew he’d made me go outside without shoes and socks on but I can’t tell her about it right now because she’s sleeping. I look over at Darren again and his eyes are staring less hard so I think it’s OK to talk now and I ask him where we’re going. He shakes his head and says, ‘Nowhere. I told 4

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you, we’re just going for a drive.’

I ask, ‘Why?’ ‘Because we’re going for a drive.’

He didn’t answer my question so I say, ‘But why?’

He looks at me and shouts, ‘Just shut up! We’ll stop in a minute.’

I want to ask him where we’re going to stop but I decide to sit quietly again instead. I still don’t understand why we had to go so quickly if we’re not going anywhere, especially as I was already in bed. I wasn’t asleep yet but I’d brushed my teeth and put my pyjamas on and I’d turned off the big light, but not my lamp with the stars on because I always have that on at night. I’d fallen asleep on the sofa earlier watching Ben 10 but then I woke up and a different programme was on. Mummy and Darren hadn’t come and told me to go to bed and I couldn’t see them anywhere downstairs so I thought they must be in their bedroom still. I went upstairs and I tried to listen through the bedroom door but I couldn’t hear anything. I was sleepy and I really wanted to see Mummy and get her to put me to bed but I’m not allowed to interrupt when they’re in their bedroom, so I went to the bathroom and stood on the stool so I could reach the sink and I brushed my teeth all by myself. When I finished I ran towards their bedroom to show Mummy what a good job I’d done but then I remembered about not interrupting so I went to my bedroom instead. I got into bed but I couldn’t get back to sleep straight away so I just laid there. After a while I heard their bedroom door open and I heard the stairs creak. Then I heard the front door open and then close and I heard car doors closing outside and I thought they were going away and leaving me in the house on my own and I got scared, so I jumped out of bed and ran down the stairs. The front door was closed but it wasn’t locked so I reached up and opened it and I saw Darren in the car and I was scared they’d forgotten about me so I shouted, ‘Darren!’ as loud as I could so he knew I was there. He looked at me and I could tell he was angry because I shouted so loud. He got out of the car and walked towards me really quickly and bent down to grab my arm and said, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He wasn’t shouting, he was talking so quietly he was almost whispering, but I could still tell he was angry.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked him.

‘For a drive,’ he said. ‘Get back in the house.’

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I asked him where Mummy was and he said, ‘She’s in the car,’ but I couldn’t see her. I said, ‘I don’t want to be on my own. I want to go with you.’

He looked down at the ground and then stood up suddenly and slammed the front door shut and I realised I had set him off. ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘but we have to go right now.’ He pulled me along by my arm towards the car. I wanted to tell him I wasn’t wearing shoes and socks but I knew I had to be quiet until he calmed down. Then he opened the driver’s door and picked me up and put me in the passenger seat and he sat in the driver’s seat, but as soon he sat down he said a bad word and got back out of the car again. He walked towards the house again and opened the side gate and went into the garden. He was moving really fast and I thought maybe we were late for something and he was in a hurry. I turned round to look for Mummy but she wasn’t in the back. I was very confused because he said she was in the car and I wondered if he’d left her in the house by mistake because he was in such a hurry. I heard him open the shed door – I could tell it was the shed door because it makes a funny squeaky sound, like a bird squawking. I couldn’t hear anything for a bit and then he came back carrying a big green plastic bottle in each hand. He went round to the boot

and looked like he was about to open it but then he changed his mind and opened one of the doors in the back and put the bottles behind my seat. They made the whole car smell of petrol stations. Then he got back in the driver’s seat and started the engine. He started driving before we’d put our seatbelts on so I put mine on quickly and he put his on too after I told him he’d forgotten.

I asked him where Mummy was again and he said, ‘She’s in the boot.’ I asked him why and he said, ‘Because she wanted to ride in the boot for a change.’ I’ve never ridden in the boot before and I think it’s a brilliant idea. I wanted to ask Mummy what it’s like so I called her name but Darren said, ‘Stop it! She’s sleeping.’

‘Why is she sleeping?’ I asked.

Darren took a big breath in and a big breath out and said, ‘You remember how when you were little and you wouldn’t go to sleep, your mum used to take you out in the car and you’d be asleep in minutes? Well, your mum had trouble getting to sleep tonight. That’s why we’re going for a drive – to help her get to sleep. And she’s in the boot so she can lie down more comfortably. She’s just fallen asleep and we have to

be quiet so we don’t wake her up.’

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I think that’s funny because I’m not sleepy at all anymore, even though we’ve been driving for ages. I’m too excited about being in the front to be sleepy.

The car slows down and then stops. Darren turns the engine off but he doesn’t get out of the car, he just sits there staring ahead. I undo my seatbelt and look out the window. We’re in a place that I’ve never been to before. There isn’t much here, though, just a big car park with weeds on the ground and no cars in it.

There aren’t any streetlights and it’s really dark now that the headlights are off. There are some big buildings next to the car park but there are no lights on in them either and some of the windows are smashed so I don’t think anyone lives there. I don’t like the dark. Darren’s still just sitting there but I don’t know whether I can say anything or whether I should be quiet. Then Darren opens the door and goes round to the back of the car and opens the boot. He didn’t say I could get out too but I want to see whether Mummy’s still sleeping so I open my door and jump out. There are lots of pebbles on the floor and they’re sharp and they hurt my feet and I say, ‘Ow!’ Darren looks at me and says, ‘Stay where you are,’ so I stay where I am.

I lean on the car seat so my feet don’t hurt so much. He leaves the boot open and gets the bottles from the back seat and puts them on the ground. Then he stands still and puts his hands over his face and I think he’s crying but then he takes his hands away from his face and I can’t see any tears.

He crouches down in front of me. ‘Right, Will,’ he says. ‘Listen carefully because this is important.’ His voice sounds funny and crackly, like he’s got a cold. ‘You know everything that’s happened tonight – us coming here, your mum being in the boot and everything?’

I nod.

‘Do you reckon you could forget it ever happened and never, ever speak about it to anyone?’

I’m confused. ‘But it did happen,’ I say. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

He sighs. ‘But could you pretend it never happened? Forever?’

I don’t know what he wants me to say so I don’t say anything.

‘So if anyone asks you where your mum is, you wouldn’t know, OK?’ I still don’t understand but I nod anyway.

‘So what do you say if someone asks you where your mum is?’

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I say, ‘She’s sleeping.’

He looks at me for a long time. It’s too dark to see his face properly so I can’t tell whether he looks angry or not, but I don’t think he does. I think he looks like he’s ill.

‘Do you want to give your mum a hug?’

I’m happy he said that and I nod lots. He gets up and I run round to the back of the car as fast as I can so the pebbles have less time to hurt my feet. I peek into the boot. At first I can’t see Mummy at all because she’s all snug and wrapped up in lots of blankets, but then I see her hair poking out the top. I start climbing in and Darren helps me. I grab on to Mummy. She’s got her back to me so I give her a big hug from behind. Her hair smells of shampoo and I like it. She doesn’t move when I hug her so I turn to Darren and I whisper, ‘She’s still asleep. Does that mean we can go home now?’

Darren looks down at us and doesn’t say anything for a while. Then he says, ‘Yes. You stay there with your mum,’ but he says it really quietly so he doesn’t wake Mummy up. He closes the boot and it makes a loud bang that makes me jump, but Mummy doesn’t jump. I thought it was dark before but now it’s really,

really dark. I don’t like the dark and I’m scared but then I think about how I’m going to be riding in the boot and I forget about being scared. I snuggle up closer to Mummy and I wrap my feet up in the blanket to try and warm them up. I can hear Darren’s footsteps on the pebbles on the ground outside. Then I hear the sound of water splashing onto the car. It must have started raining outside and it sounds very loud from in here. Mummy doesn’t seem to hear it, though. She must be really tired. It smells really badly of petrol stations all of a sudden. I put my face in her hair and I sniff in her shampoo smell and I think of all the things I’ve done today – like brushing my teeth on my own and sitting in the front – that I’ll get to tell her when she wakes up.

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Why Most People Don't Like Short Stories Charles E. May In an era when emails, texts, and tweets prize abbreviation rather than elaboration you would think that when folks read fiction it would more likely be a story that takes less than an hour than a novel that requires several hours.

Not so.

It is common knowledge among agents, editors, publishers, and critics-- i.e. those who know about such things--that most people prefer reading novels to reading short stories.

Why is that?

Once upon a time, short stories were quite popular. But that was a time when printed periodicals were the primary means by which people who wanted escape, entertainment, and recognition read fiction.

As less demanding sources for simple, entertaining stories became available—movies, radio, television,

Netflix, and YouTube—the technology of print just seemed too laborious. Writers, although they found fewer and fewer periodicals willing to publish stories, continued to write them—because they just had to— if not for money then for love.

And what such persistence comes down to is the writer's love of language. The mysterious relationship between words and what we loosely call "reality" is not of great interest to many people. Most of the time, when we read fiction, we're quite content to respond to words as simply pointers to some hypothetical actualities. It is the event that interest us, or the people--not the language.

Novels might require a longer commitment, but stories demand a deeper concentration and a more intense focus on what makes them stories; a lot of people would rather not exert themselves that way. As writer Lorrie Moore puts it, “Stories require concentration and seriousness." "Shockingly," she says “people often don’t have a straight half hour of time to read at all. But they have fifteen minutes. And that is often how novels are read, fifteen minutes at a time. You can’t read stories that way” Occasionally, a writer comes along who can so cleverly conceal the "art" of the short story that the reader

thinks he or she is seeing through the language to "the real thing." Alice Munro is such a writer. So is William Trevor. With a little help from his editor, so was Raymond Carver.

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Last year, George Saunders, a writer so clever at constructing satiric stories that the reader thought he or she was responding to the ideas alone, also makes the short story seem independent of its language.

However, Saunders told several interviewers that the litmus test for him is always the language. He emphasized the importance of looking very closely at the prose and seeing if it has any energy or not and then trying to get that feeling in the language. He talked about his discovery that a sentence was more than just a "fact-conveyor"--that it also could have a "thrilling quality of being over-full, saying more than its length should permit it to say."

When Saunders' collection Tenth of December got more buzz last year than short stories usually get, Adrian Chen in a gawker blog, ranted that Saunders should get off his high-toned literary butt and write a novel. “Short fiction is the Hard Stuff--pure uncut stories prized by real literature heads,” snorted Chen.

John Updike once suggested, “The suspicion persists that short fiction, like poetry has gone from being a popular to a fine art, an art preserved in a kind of floating museum.” Perhaps we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that the short story has indeed gone the way of poetry—thus appreciated mainly by other writers and a few readers familiar with the form’s unique thematic and stylistic characteristics.

Barbara Kingsolver lamented a few years ago, “Most Americans would sooner read a five-hundred-page book about a boy attending wizard school…than pick up a book offering them a dozen tales of the world complete in twenty pages apiece…. It may be that most Americans don’t read short stories because…a good short story cannot be Lit Lite; it is the successful execution of large truths delivered in tight spaces.”

Those who like the precision of poetry, and they are few, like short stories. Everybody else, and they are many, like novels. Most readers don't enjoy short stories for the very reasons that most writers do.

Charles E. May is Professor Emeritus of Literature at California State University Long Beach. He has published nine books and several hundred articles and reviews on the short story. He maintains a blog on Reading the Short Story at may-on-the-short-story.blogspot.com

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Granted

By Matthew Harrison

That morning, George had quarrelled with his wife Heather. That always unsettled him--and what was his friend Robert saying? Robert, head of philosophy at Church College and as solemnly grey-bearded as an Old Testament prophet, was talking about levitation. The font in the college chapel was hovering six inches off the ground! What nonsense was that?

“Either it’s an extraordinarily clever trick,” Robert was saying as he fingered his beard, “or some new kind of physics.” He looked hopefully at George--which was not unreasonable since George was head of physics at Bunting College. “Or perhaps we consult Simon. Yes, it’s really his department.”

Simon, Bunting’s doctor of divinity, was the third member of their group. They were a sort of Oxford A team, ready over a quiet pint in the Ram’s Head to tackle any question affecting mankind. But the font was

something strange--and for George it came at an awkward time. His mind in turmoil, he followed his friend up the stone staircase that led to Simon’s rooms.

By the time they reached Simon’s door, George had nailed it down. It was religion. That was why he and Heather could not agree. He had met Heather at a church dance, and while his faith had faded over the years, she dutifully continued to attend church and mumble prayers at night. This divergence was a source of friction for them, made worse by the lack of a child.

Simon, a thin eager man whose Adam’s apple bobbed prominently as he spoke, welcomed them in.

He listened with professional patience as Robert told him about the font.

Then, unable to contain himself, Simon burst out, “Gentlemen, my dear friends, I am so glad you have come! You see, I too have had--well, what would you call it?--an experience.” His face shone with evangelical enthusiasm.

The experience, once Simon had explained it, sounded rather trivial to George. It concerned an effusion of red from the statue of Christ in the Bunting College chapel. Simon had carefully, even scientifically, eliminated the possible natural sources, such as mould, rust, student pranks, optical illusion, and so on.

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Having proceeded in this methodical manner, he was led inescapably to the conclusion that the statue had bled, and moreover had bled in the precise locations of the five wounds.

“I need hardly tell you,” Simon concluded, “how awkward this is for me--would be for me-ecumenically speaking.”

Robert nodded sympathetically. “Evidence for the other side?”

Simon laughed uncomfortably. “‘The Lord disposes.’ But come and see for yourself.”

He led the way down the staircase. Bunting’s quadrangle, when they emerged into the sunlight, was somehow strangely different. George could not at first get his bearings. Then he realised what was wrong.

The chapel had disappeared.

The friends stood and gawped at the place where the chapel had been. Its former location--a missing tooth in the row of buildings that made up the quad--was marked by masonry sliced off at ground level.

Stunned, the three dons made their way round the now strangely open quad and stood in front of the gap.

Through it, the trees and flowers of the college garden were visible. Somehow the walls, pillars, pulpit, organ and all the paraphernalia within the chapel had been removed as if with a knife.

Simon turned to his friends almost in tears. “I--I’m sorry, the statue appears to have gone.”

“Never mind.” Robert twisted his beard reflectively. “Your chapel trumps my font. Though what it might mean ecumenically...”

Simon pulled himself together. “Gentlemen,” he said, with gathering excitement, “Surely we have here incontrovertible evidence of something--something extraordinary. Is this or is it not a modern-day miracle?”

Robert shrugged. George opened his mouth, but found nothing to say. He looked at the space where the chapel had been, the smooth finish to the severed stone, the clean way in which water pipes and wiring had been cut through. There was no rational explanation for it at all.

*

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The rest of the day was spent in fruitless investigation. The police came round, and George had to fill in a lost and found report on the missing chapel. By the time he got home it was late.

Heather was sitting on the sofa, rather forlorn. George apologised, and was starting to tell her what he had seen when he realised that she was weeping.

“Why didn’t you call me?” she asked between sobs. “You’ve been ignoring me all day.”

George guiltily pulled out his mobile. It showed nine missed calls. “I’m so sorry--” he began.

“If you cared, George, you would want to hear my news.”

George looked as caring as he could, and asked what it was.

“I’m--I’m pregnant.”

What! That was incredible. Heather was forty-two, and although she remained hopeful, after twenty years of effort and medical intervention George thought that there was no chance. But now--a baby! It was little short of a miracle.

Heather was looking up at him. George felt a rush of warmth and affection as he knelt down to embrace her. What a thing! He would tell Robert--let his friend philosophise that away!

The evening and a good portion of the night passed in discussion and conjugal felicity. All thought of the day’s strange events went from George’s mind.

*

The following morning, after he had got Heather her breakfast, George remembered and glanced through the morning paper. But it had nothing about the Bunting chapel. What did one have to do to get into the news, he thought--levitate an entire college? Nonetheless, plenty of other strange things had been reported.

In particular, football matches were apparently seeing ‘cricket scores’.

George switched on the television, and found a match playing. Yes, there were an extraordinary number of

goals--so many that one of the keepers had to be carried off in despair. George looked idly for patterns in

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the play. And then he had an idea.

“It’s just a hypothesis,” he explained to his two friends as he sat them down in front of Robert’s television and slipped in the DVD he had made. “See what you think.”

“They keep crossing themselves,” Simon said after a while. “I didn’t realise footballers were so devout. We could do with a bit of that in the old Church of England,” he added ruefully.

Robert’s brain was at work. “George, you are hypothesising that the self-crossing and the goals are

linked? Cause and effect?”

“How can that be?” Simon exclaimed.

“Isn’t that your department?” Robert said pointedly. “The efficacy of prayer?”

Simon coloured. “But just crossing yourself--of course there’s nothing wrong with demonstrations of faith, rather laudable in fact--but you don’t imagine...”

George tried to help. “I think we are saying that we should imagine just that.”

With difficulty Simon controlled himself. “Isn’t that rather trivialising prayer?”

“It may be trivial to you,” Robert said heavily, “but to a footballer--and the fans--a goal may be life or death.”

Simon’s lips tightened. “A prayer is a solemn act of communion in faith. It is not a request for personal advantage.”

“Surely that is precisely what it is,” came Robert’s rejoinder. “It is a request for something, which

must advance your agenda ahead of others’.”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” George said, seeing Simon bristle. “We don’t need to argue.

What we need is an experiment. See the proof.”

“An experiment?” Simon said doubtfully.

“Yes, we have to see if prayer works. We could try ourselves to levitate an object. This table, for example. Do you think you could lead us?”

Simon laughed nervously. “A prayer is not a party trick.”

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“Never mind,” Robert said brusquely. “George and I will try ourselves, if you’d rather not.”

Simon would rather not. He got up and left.

Rather awkwardly, as they hadn’t done this sort of thing since their schooldays, the two friends each put their hands together and leant forward, elbows on knees. Robert led, and George mumbled after him.

The table remained unmoved. After many attempts the two men gave up. “I suppose you have to have faith in the first place,” Robert conceded. “Well--back to Simon.”

He suggested a rendezvous at the Ram’s that evening. George rang Heather; she was busy and he thought it all right to go. Simon sounded grumpy when George called him, but he agreed with some reluctance to join them.

In the rear saloon of the Ram’s, in a wooden alcove which reminded George of the pews in Bunting’s now-vanished chapel, the three men sat down. Simon asked them politely about their day.

They told him about their failure to raise the table. “We don’t have your powers,” Robert concluded.

Simon flushed. “You can’t subject faith to experiment.”

“We need your help, you know,” George chipped in.

Simon grumbled a bit more, then relented. He compressed his lips, put his hands together and shut his eyes, mumbling inaudibly. Nothing seemed to happen. Then all of a sudden Robert’s glass rose from the table and then dropped back with a jolt, spilling some beer.

“Good heavens!” George exclaimed.

Robert calmly thanked their friend. “That settles it. Prayer works--provided you have the requisite faith.”

“Prayer has always worked,” Simon corrected him. “It’s just that previously prayers were granted in ways that we didn’t expect. But now we are seeing--ah--what you might call direct results.”

His eyes shone. “It is wonderful, perhaps indeed a sign of redemption for mankind. I venture to say-”

What Simon was going to say they never heard, for at that moment there was a crash outside, accompanied by screams. Something massive smashed into the front of the Ram’s, shaking the whole building.

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Robert leapt up, urging his friends to follow. George hesitated as he heard a muffled grunting through the intervening wall, with scraping and stamping as if of a powerful animal. It seemed suddenly cold; he stood paralysed.

Dimly, he was aware of Robert’s strong arm about his waist. He found himself dragged through the back door of the Ram’s and out into the lane. There the screams were louder; behind them, the wall of the Ram’s collapsed in a roar of tumbling masonry. A dark shape loomed out of the rubble. Surprised at his own calmness, George waited for the end.

But there was a brilliant flash, a deafening bellow--suddenly cut off--and a smell of burnt flesh. Simon’s voice rang high above the din. Dazed and half blinded, George stumbled after Robert. His first thought was of Heather and the baby.

*

His family still on his mind, George sat shivering in Robert’s rooms, barely able to sip the whisky his host provided. The philosopher, in better shape, poured himself a large measure and downed it at once. But Simon’s eyes were blazing.

“That thing of Satan!” he exclaimed, “that demon! What a blessing that I had this!” He marched excitedly up and down the room, clutching the crucifix that that hung on a chain round his neck.

“You saved us,” Robert said simply. “Thank you. Marvellous display.”

Simon sat down, still exclaiming to himself.

George’s need to contact Heather was becoming painful. He had lost his mobile, so Robert brought him the fixed line. However, there was no connection. George struggled to his feet, but his legs proved too weak to support him and he collapsed back onto the sofa.

“You’ll have to stay here for a while, old chap,” Robert said. Turning to the television, he switched it on. “Let’s see what’s happening.”

An extended newsflash had replaced the normal programming. Excited newscasters were reporting 16

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chaos across the country. An enormous chasm had opened in the ground just north of Hatfield. A man breathing fire roamed the streets of York, apparently impervious to fire hoses and tasers. Graves had opened in Warwick; decayed corpses were wandering about. A group of ‘angels’ were circling the dome of St Paul’s. And a horde of wolves had descended from the Cotswolds. The armed forces had been called out and were supporting emergency services everywhere. Scientists expressed their bafflement. Ordinary people interviewed spoke of Armageddon, of the end of the world.

These alarming images brought George back to his senses. “What is happening?” he asked.

“We have already established that,” Robert said. “Prayers are being granted.”

“Prayers?” George exclaimed. “Who would pray for that--that thing at the Ram’s? People pray for good things. But monsters, wolves, vanishing chapels…?”

“We’ve had good weather recently, too,” Robert said. “But perhaps not everyone praying is good and sensible. And the power that is granting the prayers doesn’t seem to mind.”

Simon could not let this pass, and the three friends argued but without conclusion. George tried again to call Heather, but the line was still down. He really had to get home. So Robert offered a lift.

As they drove out of the comforting stone walls of Church College, the chaos showed no signs of abating. Fires illuminated the night sky in all directions, and the sound of sirens and sudden reports whether 17

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of gunfire or things burning filled the air. George felt the prick of fear, sharpened by anxiety about his newly-expanded family.

Robert drove carefully around piles of debris. A riot or looting party was raging nearby, and as they passed a stone clanged against the car door. Robert calmly accelerated, and when they were out in the country the scene in the headlights was normal. But fire lit up the horizon, and something large and dark swept overhead, rocking the car with its passage.

“This can’t go on,” George said. “Everything will collapse. That is, if someone doesn’t pray for the end of the world first.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” his friend mused. “If all prayers are being granted, what about the Millenialists? The Satanists? Though I suppose we might have seen their work at the Ram, and if it hadn’t been for Simon--” “That’s it! George exclaimed. “Perhaps all the bad prayers are being granted, but because of Simon and others like him the effects are being overturned.”

“Hmm,” Robert mused. “Like counterinsurgency? A SWAT team--of good pray-ers, working flat out to keep the world from being turned upside down. And now, for some reason, they can’t quite keep up, and the bad things are slipping through.”

Mulling over this hypothesis, George slammed the car door and bid his friend a safe journey back.

*

The government had declared a state of emergency, and George was glad of the excuse to stay in with Heather that week. They started to make plans for the pregnancy and for the birth itself.

From time to time, they watched the news. Heather, absorbed in her new feelings, paid less attention, but George watched anxiously. Troops were posted to guard essential sites, although when it came to it they were unable to stop the sites being levitated away or simply disappearing. Monsters appeared, but

these at least did prove more tractable, their machine-gunned corpses being hauled away for examina-

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tion and disposal. Small cracks in the earth were filled by bulldozers; larger ones were fenced off. Scientists continued to pronounce themselves baffled. Religious leaders had more to say, but little real insight.

George found it rather galling that so many people seemed able to pray effectively while he could not.

And not all of the things prayed for were bad. The weather was fine for early summer; several people he knew appeared suddenly slimmer and healthier; there were reports of miraculous recoveries from cancer.

New athletic records were set almost daily.

Gradually, life settled into the new normality. Potentially dangerous but ultimately rather trivial miracles continued to happen, causing minor disruption; truly apocalyptic events remained in abeyance. The world did not end. The government put up advertisements asking people to pray responsibly; it provided prayer counselling in severely affected areas.

Nonetheless, George wondered why things were not worse.

He put the question to Robert one day as the two friends were having lunch together near the

Ram’s. Through the window they could see scaffolding covering the site; the pub was being rebuilt. It made George feel curiously positive.

“Is it that people just aren’t very imaginative?” he said. “Or are they fundamentally sensible after all?

Make a giant hole in the ground if you must; but blow up the world, no.”

“It does seem that there is a constraining factor,” Robert admitted. “But common sense… Hmm.” Before the philosopher could pronounce on the prevalence of common sense among mankind, Simon rang. He was unable to come.

“I suppose Simon would say it was Providence,” George said in tribute to their absent friend.

That wasn’t very reassuring to Robert, since some nasties were obviously coming through. Perhaps one day Providence would let through a real whopper.

George was thinking further. “Surely someone, something, must be screening out the really bad prayers?”

“Or someone could simply have prayed that no prayer for the end of the world should be effective,“ Robert countered.

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“But how would that work?” George asked. “Why grant that prayer, and not, well, not a Millenialist’s prayer for the end of the world?”

Robert thought for a moment. “Perhaps it’s just whichever came first.”

George latched onto this excitedly. “But then it’s just timing! As soon as this phenomenon of prayergranting appeared, someone could be, should be working flat out to fill all the key spots with their own super-prayers!”

“That would be the hypothesis,” Robert acknowledged. He looked thoughtfully at his friend.

George paused. A thought painful in its implications had come to him. But to the scientist that he was, duty called.

“Then isn’t it obvious what we’ve got to do?” he said.

Robert nodded. He patted his friend on the shoulder with a heavy hand.

Simon, when they got hold of him that evening, was flabbergasted. “You expect me to do that?”

A nod from his friends indicated that that was exactly what they expected. They were standing in the doorway of the Church College bar, looking out on the moonlit pond. A cold air rose from the water.

“But it’s impious, it’s immoral!” Simon exclaimed. “It’s setting myself up as the saviour of mankind. I can’t, I simply can’t.”

“It looks like that,” Robert said, “and there’s ecumenical problems as well. But someone has to do it. We have been lucky so far, but that may not last.”

“And why me?” Simon continued. “Lots of other people have the power, it seems. Why not them?”

“If they haven’t done it, perhaps they never will. And unless it is done quickly, it may be too late.

Perhaps it is already too late.” Robert twisted his beard with finality.

Simon looked glum. “I’ve hardly got used to the--ah--power. And now you’re asking me to give it up?”

George nodded gently. “We know how you feel.”

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Simon sighed, and submitted to the will of his friends. Robert and George quietly left him and went into the warmth and light of the bar.

A short while later Simon re-joined them. In response to Robert’s enquiring glance, he nodded sadly.

“Look,” he said. He focused on a beer glass on the counter, and with a gesture, bid it rise. The glass stubbornly stayed put. The two friends clapped Simon on the back, and George bought him a beer.

“That’s step one,” Robert said. “Now let’s check step two.”

They went out of the college gate. The night air was fresh and clear; stars could be seen. The street was quiet and all seemed normal except that people were out and about, talking excitedly. Robert pronounced himself satisfied. The two friends thanked Simon again, and he went off glumly towards Bunting.

Now that the deed had been done, George found himself trembling. Robert gently asked him if he would like a lift back.

“The buses should be good now,” George said.

“You deserve more than a bus,” came the reply. And silently George accepted the lift.

He was glad of the comforting bulk of his friend, beard and all, as they sped along the roads to his village.

And outside the car there were no obstacles, no fires, no dark shapes hurtling overhead, just the orderly houses, hedgerows and fields that there should have been. Robert talked cheerfully of a conference he was organising on free will.

The car soon reached its destination--too soon for George’s liking. They were outside his house.

“Shall I wait?” Robert asked.

“Thanks, I can manage,” George said.

He got out, and paused. Now he was home and had to face the consequences of his decision. Weakly he walked up the garden path and fumbled for his keys.

He barely had the door open when Heather flung herself into his arms. “Oh George!” she cried, “I’m so sorry, the baby...”

“I know,” George said, hugging his wife as tears flowed down his cheeks.

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Living with my Past

By Maithreyi Nandakumar I was 12 when I followed my uncle into the jungle. My parents had just been killed in the bombings. My uncle told me stories of the Cause and how much it mattered. He told me that in the Movement, there was no religion – no God, just justice. He laughed at the rest of the family, especially my grandmother, who liked to pray and perform rituals. Justice was our religion, he said – and I believed him.

I fully expected to be at least as tall as him. Nearly twenty years later, I am the same height I was then – a mere five foot two. I’m 30 now – stunted by my experience, seeking solace, seeking peace, and seeking refuge in a foreign land.

I was asked 86 questions during my Home Office interview. It was my second attempt – this time at least, I didn’t pass out from the stress of the interrogation, as I had done the first time. That was too much and I couldn’t cope. The interpreter on the Skype connection waited for just a few minutes when the screen went

black while I struggled to speak. The interview had to stop. That’s when the shivers started – from deep within. I was freezing swiftly – my arms went stiff and I clenched my fists and pounded the table to bring them back to life, but they refused to. My legs had gone dead earlier on. I wish the interpreter had stayed to ask me why, so that I could try to explain, say something. But this is also a familiar state – having to swallow what I intend to say, to not say what I could say, to simply not give in to the lengthy questioning.

For a couple of years, I was lost in the system – until I received a letter saying I could be arrested if I didn’t show up at the police station every month to sign. That really scared me and brought me out of where I was hiding with friends. The letter also said that there was a chance that I could get detained when I did show up. Once again, I’m filled with the same feelings of panic and dread. It doesn’t feel safe to be here at all. I feel scared – exactly the way I have all the time.

The Cause became my life – I had no other choice. I did as I was told. An aunt who lived close by fed me in those early years, but she too disappeared. No one knew if she’d died or was taken away. And then my uncle was also killed and given a hero’s burial. I remembered my parents’ cremation and shed a few tears

in their memory.

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When my uncle had first taken me in to the jungle, I was asked to help him and the guerrilla army to dig trenches, deliver messages and be available at people’s beck and call. Not being strong or clever, I was always given the most basic jobs. Every morning, we minions would be asked to assemble in the compound for exercise and to listen to the five-minute lecture played on the speakers. It was the voice of the Leader, a man whom all, including my uncle revered and even feared. Today’s topic was on faith – how to evolve our faith to new horizons that knew no God, caste or creed, to keep the fire of the Cause burning strong. I listened without comprehending too much. There was no fire inside me, just a basic need to remain alive.

I sit in one corner of the triangle, in the counselling session I’ve been asked to attend. I have no idea what it means, but it might help my case to show up here. As the interpreter speaks to me, translating what the old woman counsellor in front is saying, my thoughts are elsewhere. Or I should say, exactly where they’ve always been, all of the time. My daily nightmares provide me endless hours of visual stimulation, chasing me down dark alleys, hiding as I helplessly wait to be caught. The shouting is getting closer, and they are beating the door down and I cannot move because once again, my limbs have gone dead.

I see the interpreter sitting on my left – I want to understand what she’s saying but can’t. My thoughts keep going back to the final days of the bombing. How I wish I hadn’t seen any of that and remained intact.

Now, in order to remain in this country, I need to find words to describe those horrors when all I want to do is to push it out of my system and get rid of it in a simple, effective way.

The counsellor in front is speaking in soft, measured tones that I can’t relate to. I see her and can only recall the old woman in my village – the one who would get drunk on cheap liquor and go into a religious trance. People would hold her up in respect and approval. Coconuts would be broken, camphor tabs lit and

prayers said in honour of the gods we were praying to.

The interpreter takes a deep breath and begins to tell me what the counsellor has just said. I stop her speaking and tell her that I’m unable to listen as the images are overwhelming me right now. She says this to the counsellor, who asks what those images are.

My work for the Cause in those final days was the lowest job anyone could have done. At periodic lulls from the shelling from above when planes dropped bombs like giant chocolates, I would be sent to fetch the bodies – the mutilated women whose faces I didn’t recognise, children and the elderly. That was my job – an undertaker on the battlefield.

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And when the Movement was disbanded and the Cause defeated, I was rounded up and taken in for torture.

It’s ironic that I feel less humiliated by what the Army did to me during interrogation than what I had to do in those final days. I am unable to express this. I feel I didn’t do justice to my second interview.

I’m haunted by these images every moment. I’m weighed down by the dead I carry. I shed tears for my fate, having had the misfortune to perform this task. It’s almost as if every night I experience rigor mortis which wakes me up. I can only think of myself as a living corpse.

“Do you believe in God?” the lady asks and I say yes, feeling shame all over again.

She makes me close my eyes and breathe. She tells me to think of me bearing my burden and asks me to offer those dead people blessings from here to send them on their way. She tells me to pelt the bodies with beautiful flowers and light. I hold that image in my mind and see myself breaking the coconut and watching the water trickle down. I open a whole packet of camphor onto the brass plate and light it, raising it high over my head. Its smell is fragrant. Finally there’s fragrance. In that instant, I feel my tense muscles relax. This might be the solace I’ve been yearning for.

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Bones and Hearts Accordion

By Nicole Oquendo

I am sixteen. We are in the air, my father and brother and me. While my father sits and my brother sleeps, I am trembling from an overwhelming fear of flying over water. When we are almost to Puerto Rico, my father turns to me from the middle seat.

You didn’t shake when I took you on that private jet, he says.

No, I say, as if there really was a jet, or that he was somehow the pilot.

We eat pretzels and watch the in-flight movie until we land.

Once, he flipped his truck three times in the air before it smashed down hard on the highway. He

walked to the nearest payphone, no scratches or bruises.

Of course everyone is looking at me. My father, as usual, pretends not to notice my hair—stop-sign red—and my ripped shorts and t-shirt. My vinyl boots squeak against the sidewalk as I take my first steps in San Juan, focusing on the landscape instead of the people staring and talking to each other in a language I can barely pick up in conversation outside of a few words I find interesting. Any time I have ever left

Florida I was too young to remember, and I have never been to Puerto Rico before. We are here to see my father’s brother—my uncle, whose name I don’t remember—that he hasn’t seen in thirty years, but the ocean waves crashing along rocks reaching high up the side of a lighthouse within view from the airport doors, were important too. I don’t say a word as my father piles us into the rental car and drives us to the beachside villa where we will spend the next week.

Once, he fell off a building and landed on his feet. His back squeezed together and pulled apart.

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While we are lying in separate rooms, I remember an old nightmare: my father, on his recliner in our living room, would smolder from the bottom up until his entire body was made of ashes. I could only sleep while I knew he was awake, certain he was whole and there. In my dreams the worst would start at his head—slowly, wind would blow inside the house and scatter the ashes of his head in a visible trail. I watched this continue until he was gone, nothing left but a pile of clothes on the couch.

That’s it, it, he said through a blubbering mouth, spit foaming more between his lips with every word. He is much larger than me—when I was younger I told my classmates that he was made of iron; he told them he chewed on glass before he swallowed it. He had never cried before that. I knew.

In the morning, my father is gone. My brother and I are alone in the villa’s kitchen and I’m too scared to leave it because I don’t know the landscape of the island or the language outside or when my father is coming back. We eat dry cereal that must have been left there by whoever rented the place before us—we have always been resourceful.

My brother is quiet. He’s been this way since before my mother and I moved out almost two years ago. We left while they were away together—he and my father—driving across the country and living where my father saw fit. Before this trip, I hadn’t spoken to either of them in almost a year. I’m not eager to talk now either, so I leave him alone and go back to my room. I braid my hair and put on a collared button-up shirt to feel more diplomatic.

As my father cried, I sat with my mother. Tío George called today, she said. He had begged my father to drive to the hospital and meet them. His mother—my Abuela—had been in a coma for several months, laying still and cold.

We had visited her once before. Her skin stretched over her some of her bones in thick chunks, while other places seemed hollow. My mother brushed Abuela’s hair, whispering in the chill of the hospital

room. I stared at her because people in a deep sleep don’t know you’re staring; stared at her until her face tore open, eyes and mouth in wide Os, gaping at the ceiling for a brief moment before she closed up again.

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Back into her deep sleep, my mother said, watching Abuela’s chest as it rose up and down as if nothing had happened. My father had been outside.

We drive hours out of San Juan, deep into the island—over hills and through dirt roads and around rain forest—until we reach Cataño. My father pulls the car up near the tiny house where he was born.

Boards hang off the front of it, and while my father steps slowly through the orange dirt to the door, I turn my back to him and walk through a field of short grass.

There are sensitive plants here called moriviví that we don’t have at home, with tiny pink flowers that look like baby’s breath. I lean low to the ground and feel the green leaves that slowly press closed before they open again. I shout for my brother—to show him—but he is in the car, watching my father in the doorway.

Abuela had died. My father was on the floor, pounding it with his fists. I have to die too, he moaned.

Said he’d smoke himself to death. Said he’d drive his car off the highway overpass, right through the concrete barricade, to be with her now.

I was six. Death was not anchored to reason, but nothing in relation to him ever was.

There is no answer at the door.

I watch him pace, pressing his feet into the dirt. We wait until a neighbor sees him and they talk, my father maybe touching the doorframe, maybe touching the knob before he motions for me to come back. I pick a flower from the sensitive plant before we get into the car and weave it into my hair.

He died three weeks ago, my father says.

Sometime before I graduated high school, my father signed me out of school for lunch. He took me 27

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to an expensive restaurant and ordered as extravagantly as usual, but not enough to be memorable, until his phone rang and he answered while I ate.

Yes, sir. Yes. Yes, sir. Well, no, I’m not going to be able to get to that project just yet. I know, just, yes, sir. Yes, about my mother. Yes, it is unfortunate, thank you for, yes. I am in Puerto Rico now arranging for the funeral, but if you make that check out to me now, I can have someone pick it up. That, that is very generous of you. It will definitely help offset the funeral costs. Thank you.

Once, he had fallen off a building. His back accordioned but didn’t break.

Once, he flipped his truck three times in the air, climbed out, and walked away.

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Egypt

By Atar Hadari

You have not lived until you’ve seen fifty religious Zionist girls all dancing to faith music, every one of them in long sleeves and long skirts, every one with long hair swept up and thrown through the air into the

music blaring from the kibbutz sound system. Moving back and forth like a wholesome demand for longing – you couldn’t really think of laying one of those girls down on the criss-crossed parquet floor, but you can’t help wanting to grab one in your arms – as they careen about all in one beat, step forward, step back, hair flying, and the form hugging blouse with the sleeves at half mast on their arms – after a while it is much more provocative than bare necks, bare collarbones. One step forward, two back, sway, “I believe, I believe, with the faith of one God” and the girls pull back as if one tide and Hani was always in the front rank and throwing her hair, only she wasn’t Jewish.

She was Jewish enough to be spat at in the Caucasus as a Yid and Jewish enough to be offered mass conversion (all go dip in the sea) when she got off the plane with her Jewish father the house painter. But he wouldn’t hear of it, so here she was, after the army, wanting to be a Jew and dancing with all the seminary girls, “Messiah, messiah, messiah.”

On our first night at the kibbutz, myself, my wife and the assorted Russian boys and girls on the course for would-be converts sat around the dining hall table talking.

Hani told us she'd had a boyfriend, from the neighbourhood where she lived with her adoptive family when the housepainter ran off.

“He’s not pretty, so the first night he took me out I put my glad rags on. If he’s not pretty, I should at least be pretty, right? And we sat, talked, the whole night, in his car. Just sat there, didn’t do nothing. We were together after that.”

“Where is he now?” somebody asked.

“I don’t see him anymore. It’s better. Don’t want to wonder who he’s seeing, while I’m here.”

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coat with a fur collar. It was only when a new immigrant French Jew asked if she had the right to wear that coat that I heard her say, sheepishly, “I didn’t give it back after the army”. Only then did I click – she was walking around in a bill-board saying, “I’m Jewish.” Only no-one was buying it. And that French Jew, irritated because he had no right to wear it himself, not having served in the army – also wasn’t buying it. But when the Russian girls lay on the grass outside the tiny school hut between lessons, smoking Pall Malls, Hani was always lying there in her shapeless green lump, as if the army were a spiritual armour to save her from the lions.

Hani was always first, when talk came up about the territories, what was conquered, whether by Judah Maccabee or in ’67, always the first to say, “Is that what we conquered?” This drove my wife up the wall, since she felt herself on the other side of the fence Hani was claiming to be inside of. I tended to laugh and say, “Were you here in ’67? I was here in ’67, but I was mainly drooling. I don’t remember conquering anything in ’67…” But then I was on this side of the fence. But Hani talked to us, perhaps because we were not part of the two little huts she had to share with the Russian girls. We were on our own in a little family flat, a hundred yards off and that much nearer to the synagogue. Off the winding path and on the gravel was a little steel bench that I declared my office and there I sat with my notebook and Hani talked to me, stopping by on her way back from work in the kitchen.

“Are you kidding me? I’ll keep it, but in my own way. I’m not going to go crazy. But here I’ll tell them what they want. That Devorah, I mean, what does she know? She’s like a kid – all day long, running in and out your legs, but if you need something? Where is she? I’m going to be like her? I don’t think so.

I’ll keep the commandments, but within reason.”

Hani had an adoptive family up north, which set her apart from the Russians. She knew some songs, knew how to light candles at Chanukah, maybe cover her hair if she got married – but what she knew was second hand, observed in a tradition-keeping family, not a religious one. Then again, she had a family, which was more than the rest of them did. She had someone to spend the upcoming Passover with, and that’s what it all finally came to a head about.

“Are you going? For Passover?”

“Where?”

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everyone there. They need me to help the kids. I can’t stay here.”

“They won’t let you go?”

“I’ll talk to Uzi,” she said, her face setting a little, then resuming its usual softness.

Uzi talked over every possible surface of a subject. And Hani liked to listen, and interject a running commentary about “our” conquests. If Devorah was the head of the conversion course, the maker of decisions, then Uzi was the deputy, but as we soon realized, Uzi was the air you breathed if you sat in that

room for seven months. Uzi was who you heard, day in day out, talking and talking and talking. Uzi was the voice of God, through a tin whistle, tooting from a distant barrack wall. Only here the whistle was close, this close, against your ear, and my wife, for one, despised the very air he breathed since God and he, in her opinion, were not built on the same scale. One day Uzi was teaching a class about the expulsion from Spain, while supposedly working his way through the daily prayers, when he sparked this exchange.

“A lot of the great prayers are from Spain, because that’s where the golden age was for Jews. Then of course, the Jews were expelled, the Catholic Kings fought the Muslims and it all ended.”

“The Christians beat the Muslims?” Hani’s little face lit up.

“Yes, they beat the Muslims,” Uzi replied, trying to focus once again on the passage of Yehuda HaLevi in front of him.

“Yay,” Hani turned to the class, as if to share a winning goal.

“I don’t believe you.” My wife was suddenly on her feet and screaming at the top of her lungs.

“You think the Catholic Church chasing the Muslims out of Spain is good for “us”? You think you would have had it good if you’d been one of “us” in Spain? We were burned and the Muslims let Jews write poetry, that was the golden age. ” I tried to hush her. She beat my hand away.

“I will not be quiet, every time you say something stupid like that it shows you understand nothing about it and are just racist about every single person outside that fence…”

She threw the photocopied notes of the festivals across the table and stalked out. Hani turned to Uzi as if to ask what on earth…

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“I’m not racist,” she said, “I just think the Arabs getting beat is good. That makes me racist? Not in my neighbourhood.”

“When the intifada started, first time,” she told me later on the bench, “the Arabs rioted round where we live. The next day every single Arab shop had its front broken, the doors kicked in. They didn’t riot again. That’s how it is, where I live.”

My wife came back, after the break. I sat next to her and kept my mouth shut. Uzi had said, when we first came to visit the kibbutz for an interview, “Sit in the class with her for a month, help her with the Hebrew. Then you can go up the hill to the yeshiva.” The first month passed and I stayed, not to help with Hebrew. Hebrew was not the problem. The problem was holding her down till the seven months passed and we could go in front of judges who’d say she was Jewish. I didn’t want to go up the mountain and come back to find out she’d punched out the rabbi.

She didn’t speak to Hani again until it came to Passover.

I went to talk to Devorah, caught her outside the dining hall, picking up her mail from the pigeon holes. We got our mail in a little box labelled “Conversion Course” and all our mail came in that one little box. If you didn’t pick your mail up somebody would tell you, “You got mail”. Like it wasn’t enough to share a room the size of a toilet with them five hours a day. Like you wanted them to know who in the outside world thought you were worth a stamp.

“Devorah,” I said.

“Yes?” she turned on the step where she stood, smiled, apprehensively, but smiled. She didn’t like me asking tricky questions. She looked as if I was about to ask something embarrassing about the Maccabees.

“We have an invitation for Passover,” I said, “A family in Safed. They’d like us to come for Seder.”

“You don’t want to spend Passover on kibbutz?” she said. “What about your host family? Won’t

they be disappointed?”

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“I’ve talked to them,” I said. I hadn’t, but did not think it would be a problem. Things had cooled somewhat after the initial “getting to know you” stage of invitations every Sabbath evening and I felt there wouldn’t be weeping and gnashing of teeth on Seder night if we weren’t there asking four questions and being embarrassing.

“Let me think about it,” she said, still smiling pleasantly. “By the way,” she said, “I understand you’re not working Fridays?”

Devorah fixed us all up with work, mine was teaching English to the children after school hours.

Since there were no after school hours on Friday morning, I spent the time doing a little translation on the side in our little flat. That was how we could afford to stay on kibbutz without earning anything that winter.

“I’ve put you on the rota for tomorrow,” she said. “You’ll work in ground maintenance with the other boys.”

“What will I do for clothes?” I said.

“They’ve got clothes just for you.”

The next day, I went along to the shed the Russian boys go to. Two men inside were sitting and drinking coffee, discussing last night’s TV. Nobody from kibbutz worked on maintenance. One or two, in supervisory positions, were kibbutz members. These two in the shed were Bet Shean guys, dark skin, curly hair, quoting a local version of Saturday Night Live to each other. I waited for the slightly fatter one’s rendition of a sketch to reach a natural break and asked, “Are there clothes for me?”

“Are you here today?” the skinnier one asked. He was the boss. The other one was telling him stories.

“They said I was on the rota.”

“If you’re on the rota, you’re on the rota.”

“Listen, you remember this one?” the fat guy said.

“Are there shoes for me?” I said.

“What you need shoes for?” the skinny guy said. “You going hiking?”

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“That’s funny,” the fat guy said.

“I thought I had to do gardening.”

“The others went out in the truck to do gardening. Tell you what,” he got up and took a black plastic sack out of the drawer. He unpeeled it from a pack of them and opened it like he was laying a matador’s cape in front of me. “Take this, pick up all the leaves in front of the dining hall. That’s what we have to do today. Before Sabbath. You don’t need shoes for that.”

“That’s funny,” the fat guy said.

I went and stood at one end of the square outside the dining hall. There are trees on the grass verge overlooking it, and a grocery store with bikes next to it, a long wall, and at the end of it the dining hall and the mail boxes. Not quite a playing field, but a decent space where people dance, a band plays wedding music, many tables are spread with food, people come and go dropping crumbs.

It’s doing a job like that that makes you realize the kibbutz is a fiction. If you come from outside, they tell you, your first year is spent doing manual jobs. Great, you think, that’s great. Everybody starts on the ground. Only it isn’t like that. Because it’s not what you do the first year that matters. It’s what you choose to spend your life doing later that counts. And how you look at the schmuck clearing leaves off the yard. How you look at him is how you feel about tilling that ground.

An English woman working in computers on kibbutz went by on her way into the dining hall and looked nonplussed. “Oh, they have you doing that?” she said. She smiled and walked on by to get her mail.

Then Uzi came, and watched me working. I was in my own clothes and my own shoes. Nothing was getting dirty except my hands. A little dust maybe, but it was mainly bending down all the time that was getting tiring.

“Watch your back, Daniel,” he said. “I used to work, in the fish ponds and the fields, before I ruined my back. Most interesting work I ever did on kibbutz was the fish ponds. Always something different to do, every morning. Now I teach because I ruined my back. You take a rest,” he said, then went in to get his mail.

Finally another teacher on the course, a jolly man the size of a double fridge, with sad eyes but a 34

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deep singing voice, Ubi, came by.

“They’ve got a leaf blower for that,” he said. “Didn’t they give it to you? This isn’t Egypt,” he said.

I said, “I’m nearly finished. I don’t need the leaf blower now.”

“I wouldn’t work like that,” he said. And he went in to get his mail.

I hadn’t filled the sack when the skinny guy came on the truck and said I should break for lunch.

I said, “I haven’t finished.”

He said, “It’s clean enough.”

There were still leaves near the path, outside the dining hall. I looked at them, then threw the sack of leaves in the back of the truck and went to shower.

I saw Devorah on her way to get the mail. I nodded wearily and walked past. “Oh Daniel,” she stopped me. I went back. “You can go away for Seder. I asked your family.”

We smiled and I walked away to tell my wife we could be somewhere real for the festival.

Hani ran into me as I was walking up the path.

“We’re out of here for Seder,” I told her, I couldn’t contain myself. It was like leaving on an aeroplane, not taking a bus north for a day out.

“Uzi hasn’t said anything,” she said.

“Just go,” I said.

“I can’t,” she said, “I got thrown out of one course already. This place is my last chance.”

“It’s Seder,” I said. “You’ve got a family to go to.”

“I know,” she said. She was actually near tears, but kept on smiling, smiling sourly. “Uzi said I could go, but Devorah minded. I hope he’ll let me.”

“What’ll you do if he won’t?”

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“I can’t stand it,” she said. “I have a real family. I have to be with them.

Will you take me with you?”

Hani and my wife were still not speaking at the time. I mean, one wasn’t exactly able to avoid the other, in a room the size of two desks laid end to end, but things weren’t exactly cocktail party cordial. The thought of them sitting in silence in the back of a car all the way up north did not appeal. Then again, Hani did have a car. That would make things rather faster than waiting for a bus up north, if they let her go. Her adoptive brother was meant to let her have his wheels, if they were fixed.

Everything depended on somebody else in Israel, even if you weren’t adopted, converted, or somebody’s responsibility. Something always depended on somebody else, nothing ever just came.

I saw my wife throwing wet clothes out of the front door of our apartment. That was the routine, she came home from the dairy and took off the manure-drenched clothes to get in the shower, then slipped them out the door. It was not unusual to see a small naked arm slipping out past the door dropping a huge pair of cow pat caked trousers, then slipping in again to come out with a sodden tee-shirt, maybe a little smelly baseball cap she used to cover her hair. Then I’d come in and find a small, soapy nude woman in the shower, singing and going “Haloo” over the running water. Then I’d chivvy her out and ask what happened in the dairy. Usually I didn’t have much gossip myself, on a Friday, translation being considerably less eventful than cows, even if the language was alive, though it had been, until recently, peacefully comatose.

“We’re going,” I said, through the shower door.

“Yahay,” came the cry over the sound of the water.

“Can you stand to share a car with Hani?”

“Only if she takes Arab hitchhikers. Does she have a car?” she said, emerging in a towel.

“If she can get a car, you find the Arab hitch-hikers,” I said.

“Let her find Arab hitch-hikers,” she said, “She’s the one who wants to be a Maccabee.”

Occasionally, we would go out on a week night. You couldn’t go out on Friday nights, because of the Sab36

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bath, and Saturday nights, unless you had a car, were a pain to get anywhere. But we’d go occasionally, for our sanity, into Bet Shean, to the market to buy a few sweets, maybe out to the tiny mall at the edge of the desert, where there was a kebab place. We sat outside the kebab place and had a plate of meat and fries, bottle of malt beer, some hummus. This was small change in English money and even if we weren’t earning on kibbutz, the translation paid for it. But one night we were in the mall, the week before Seder, and were just going outside to have our kebab when we ran into Hani.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi Hani,” my wife said.

“I got the car,” Hani said to me. “Did I tell you?”

“That’s great,” I said.

“But I can’t go,” she said.

“Uzi said no?” my wife said.

“It’s not even him!” Hani wailed. “It’s Devorah! Uzi’d let me go.”

We didn’t know what to say.

“He says he’ll talk to her, but he won’t. I know he won’t.” She looked like she wanted something to hit. But it had been moved out of her grasp. “Anyway,” she said, sounding like she would cry if she had a place to do it in private, “I can’t go even if she lets me. I’ve got nothing to wear.”

I wanted to laugh, but she looked serious.

“It’s your family isn’t it? Does it matter?”

“Everybody wears clothes,” she said, “Good stuff. It’s special. What do I have here? Look at that dress over there.”

We went and looked at the dress. It had no sleeves and was low cut. You couldn’t possibly wear it on a religious kibbutz, but then, that was possibly the point.

“It’s a hundred shekels,” I said.

“Yes but she doesn’t have a hundred shekels,” my wife said impatiently.

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“Do you want me to buy it?” I said to Hani.

“Could you do that?” She sounded incredulous. None of the boys and girls on the course seemed to have money. I guess they were younger, and Jewish parents that provided security were not part of their armoury, or why would they be there.

“I can give you the money next week. My brother owes me.”

“What if Uzi doesn’t let you go?” I said.

“You buy the dress,” my wife said.

We skipped beer and kebabs. We walked past the kebab place as we went out of the mall with Hani. She was beaming with her little bagged dress under her arm.

“You going to eat?” she said.

“No,” my wife said, “I had sweets.”

“Yeah,” I said, “We had something.”

“You going to wait for a ride?”

“No, we’ll walk through the fields,” my wife said, “Tithadshi,” she added.

“It’s lovely isn’t it?” Hani beamed. “I have to go now, don’t I?” “It’s Seder,” I said, “In my family it’s the only thing we kept.”

“In my family it’s huge,” Hani said.

We said goodbye.

When we walked in the field my wife said, “They’re all her family.”

“How do you mean?”

The lights of Bet Shean were behind us and we were picking our way over the ploughed furrows.

Cars whizzed past on our right every few minutes, along the highway.

“She’s going to join something.”

“And you’re not?”

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“It’ll be nice doing Seder,” she said quietly. “Tell me it’ll be nice.”

“It’ll be nice,” I said.

We were in Hani’s car headed north on the morning of Seder when her phone rang.

“Don’t answer it,” I said.

She looked at the dial. “It’s Uzi,” she said. She pressed the button and the voice came over the

speaker. It was as if kibbutz had followed us, up the highway.

“Where are you?” Uzi asked.

“I’m nearly in Safed,” she said. We were nowhere near, but we had left a while ago and he wouldn’t know when.

“You can’t get back before festival,” he said slowly, “But you have to work tomorrow. You can’t stay up there. Get back to kibbutz tomorrow morning. Early. Be here in time for work. Devorah is very an-

gry.”

He hung up.

“Devorah just found out?” I said.

Hani pressed down the accelerator and laughed.

We spent the festival with the family of my wife’s first Jewish friend in London. Yehoshua led his

Seder service decked out head to toe in a caftan and Turkish fez, tassle dangling down his back. Why? “To provoke the children to ask questions,” he boomed, “That is the central commandment of the festival. Otherwise you could eat your bitter herbs quietly and not make such a fuss about some trivial insurrection by a bunch of possibly not Jewish slaves somewhere in the middle East. No questions, no festival. Pass the hard boiled egg.”

There were seventeen family members around two tables, and no one mentioned the word “conversion” the two days we were there.

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When we got back and came bouncing into the dining room to check the mail we ran straight into Hani.

“They’re not talking to me,” she whispered.

“Who?” “The Russians.”

“Why?” “I got away.”

“We got away too.”

“They think I’m bad, but I don’t care,” she smiled again, “They can not talk to me until we’re Jewish for all I care. I can take anything now,” and she walked away, back to the kitchen, where she was always asked to clean the toilets, no matter whose turn it was. She turned, took a hundred shekels from her pocket, slid it in the converts’ mailbox, and ran.

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THE JUDGES

This annoying good looking chap is not only chiselled like a movie hero but, in a totally non -stalky way, is a real life hero as well. Where those around him fell by the way he made it through to the end. Though expected to be one of a chorus, his was a lone voice that stepped forward to provide winners and feedback for our stories.

Baptiste Bourgougnon is a humanist which, while not a faith that everyone shares, at least contains aspects that people of all faiths can get behind. He believes that humans exist, and he believes that their actions can affect the world. Hs actions have affected our world for example, particularly the worlds of our writers.

So, if you’re interested to find out how our human arbiter has judged our short listed entrants, please flip over to the next page.

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THE JUDGEMENT

Winning piece: “The Drive� by Aliki Waller 1. The Drive

Easily the best out of all of them, I thought it was very well written. The pace of the action is excellent and does not hinder on the depth of the characters. The author manages to give great depth to his characters making them real and believable very quickly. The balance between what is being described and what is left to the imagination of the reader is excellent. I was swept into the story and out of breath after reading it. I really enjoyed the darkness and realism and empathised greatly with the main character and narrator.

2. Granted

A very good story. I particularly enjoyed the ideas involving the faith and science conflict. Considering the length of the story I would have hoped to feel a stronger connection with the characters. This would have helped make the end much stronger. I wanted to feel sorry for George and his wife but I didn't. I think their story needed more time in order for the reader to feel attached to them. I really liked the humour of the story with the idea of prayers being granted and the consequences of it.

3. Living with my Past Enjoyed the story. I connected to the characters and enjoyed the time shifts although they were not always clear enough. It feels like this is an excellent first version that still needs a bit more work. The end left me a little unsatisfied. An atheist is relived by some sort of prayer did not appeal to me. Some of the sentences could flow better and I thought that some of the descriptions were a bit unclear. Overall this is a good story that has lots of potential.

4. Bones and Hearts Accordion

5. Egypt

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THE END OF THE LINE

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