The Book of Abraham by Marek Halter

As usual, Abraham the scribe woke up all at once and lay still on his bed with his eyes wide open, waiting for daylight. In Jerusalem, dawn was a promise that filled the heart. Each morning Abraham vaguely looked to it for a sign that the things of heaven and earth were in order.

It always began with a powerful stirring in the night that hung over the wilderness east of the city. The stars suddenly dimmed, and then everything happened rapidly. Light rose like an incoming tide, wave after wave, laying down deposits of delicate colors and the glitter of quartz, setting ablaze the ocher of the ramparts, the silvery blue of olive trees, the white of terraces. Donkeys brayed, roosters crowed, and flies gathered in the shadows of houses, while in the courtyard of the Temple twenty Levites opened the Nicanor Gate, turning its two heavy bronze sections on their enormous hinges until they struck the wall with a booming sound that reverberated through the city a long time. Only then did Abraham the scribe get up, happy as if he had just prayed.

But on this day, the ninth of the month of Av in the year 3830 (August 31, AD 70) after the creation of the world by the Almighty, blessed be He, Abraham the scribe would not hear the opening of the Nicanor Gate: after three months of siege, Roman legions had taken the Antonia, the fortress that commanded access to the Temple from the north. Nor would he hear the roosters and donkeys, because they had long since been eaten by the starving population of the besieged city.

Abraham did not move. As long as he had not yet plunged back into the stream of life, he could still believe that hunger, fear, and war were parts of a lingering dream, like those yellow dogs that lurked at the edges of villages in the morning and then retreated into the wilderness as soon as the day’s activities began.

But dawn came, and the usual trumpet calls were sounded in the Roman camp. Soon the great catapults would resume their assault on the ramparts, the legionaries would hurl their iron-headed battering rams against the gates, there would be the shouting of soldiers, the clang of metal…. How much longer could the few remaining able-bodied Jews hold out against the best legions of the empire? Would the Romans take the city today?

Abraham’s wife Judith lay beside him. When he heard a change in the rhythm of her light breathing, he cleared away what remained of the feelings that the night had left in his heart.
“Judith,” he said, “we’ll leave Jerusalem today, if it’s not already too late.”
“May God help us!” she replied.
“Amen!”
He got up, feeling weak from hunger, and pushed back the curtain that divided the room in two. His sons Elijah and Gamaliel were asleep; he thanked God, blessed be His name, for giving children that armor of innocence.

He went out into the little courtyard. The glare of the morning sunlight made him squint his eyes when he looked toward the Temple; the sharp points of pure gold on its roof seemed to pierce the sky. Abraham was a tall young man with dark skin and a thick beard. Like his father and grandfather before him, he was a Temple scribe.

After making sure he was alone, he bent down and pulled a loose stone out of the wall. This was where fear of bandits or people driven to theft by starvation had made him hide his treasure: a cloth bag that still contained a few handfuls of barley. He took it and went to give it to Judith. The children were still asleep.

He washed his hands over the stone slab in the window recess, put on his prayer shawl, strapped his phylacteries to his left arm and his forehead, and slowly recited the shaharith, the morning prayer:
“My God, the soul You have placed in me is pure. You created it, You formed it, You breathed it into me, You preserve it within me. It is You who will take it from me, and restore it to me one day…. Blessed be You, O Lord, who restore souls to corpses….”

Abraham was beseeching God not to forsake His city again, the ancient city of prophets and kings, when his spiritual concentration was broken by shouts.

“The Temple is burning! Abraham! The Temple is burning!”
It was his neighbors Samuel and Jonah, the potters. They stopped in the doorway, overwhelmed with despair. Abraham quickly took off his phylacteries.
Judith rushed toward him.
“Don’t go there!” she said.
“But Judith, it’s the Temple!” He saw her distraught face. “Don’t be afraid. By the Almighty, don’t be afraid! Keep the children in the house.”

The three men went outside. Across the street they saw old Joseph of Galilee, his head covered with ashes, vigorously rocking backward and forward as he prayed on his terrace. He stopped abruptly.

“Fire, flames! Divine punishment!” he cried out with savage vehemence. Then he slowly raised his eyes to the heavens and recited, “Jerusalem sinned grievously, therefore she has become filthy.”
“God bless you, Joseph,” said Abraham the scribe.
“He would do better to save the city!” the old man replied, and began praying again.

The streets were filling with people on their way to the Temple, an eerie throng of gray-faced ghosts with swollen bellies. Many of them were villagers who, after coming to celebrate Passover in the Holy City, had been forced by the Zealots to stay and help defend it. They had been the first to suffer from hunger. Now that they had devoured all the dogs, leaves, and roots they could find, they fought for the leather handle of a shield, or the thong of a sandal. It was even said that a woman had eaten her child.

Since religious law forbade burying the dead within the walls of Jerusalem, there were decomposing bodies in the streets, alleys, and ravines. The living were afflicted and obsessed by the smell, and never became used to it; some of those who lay rotting there were relatives or friends.

Violently swirling smoke was rising from the Temple. The crowd of Jews crossed the bridge over the Tyropoeon in a dense, jostling mass and, roaring with anger, pressed against the lead-sheathed gate of the Court of the Gentiles. Shrill voices wailed in anguish: “The Temple is burning! The Temple is burning!”